Appearance and Reality in Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night"

Summary: Explores the way William Shakespeare presents the concepts of appearance and reality in his play "Twelfth Night".
Keywords: theater

The nature of the medium of theatre means that everything portrayed by Shakespeare is an illusion 'played upon a stage'; the play is a fantastical arena where appearance is not limited by the constraints of reality. In Twelfth Night, Shakespeare deliberately plays with the ideas of disguise, deception, misinterpretation and all the ways the senses can fool the mind and so presents a play that seems to reflect its own inherent fictitiousness by way of appearance and reality being very different at times. This self- reference in Twelfth Night is also evident in the dialogue until the very end; Feste sings "our play is done". I would agree with one critic's opinion that the play "revels in its own theatricality".

The play, then, is fabricated for the benefit of the audience and I think that the intention of Shakespeare is in part to make them accept as reality...